Data Recovery on a Laptop 2.5 inch Western Digital 320 GB HDD with Scratched Surface

We received this hard drive from a customer that had just picked it up from a company with a known name in the data recovery industry. The company was unable to recover the stored data due to the scratches on the first platter surface.

Upon opening the hard drive in a clean room environment we noticed the o-ring shape scrapes on the platter. After removing the heads we discovered that head number 4 was damaged and covered in magnetic dust from the scratched platter.

You can check the filter of the hard drive for particles; if the damage is severe then the filter will look very dirty. If the damage is not that severe then the filter will not disclose the damage unless it is observed under a microscope.

In this case we were able to forego checking the filter because the damage was very obvious. The o-ring was on the second platter the upper side.
Given the poor condition of the hard drive we decided that the best chance of recovering data would be to remove the bad head and replace it from a donor drive. The challenge was to do this and minimize the damage to the second platter while preventing the head from getting damaged when we had to read the data from the first platter.
Our solution was to read the data from this hard drive starting with the first two heads, while disabling heads three and four. There was still the question of what might happen when the active heads reached the damaged area from the second platter, even if we didn’t want to read the sectors from that area yet.
We marked the platters, removed the damaged platter and replaced it with a platter from the donor drive. (Some of the experts are shaking their heads.) Remember, it was the second platter we replaced, the firmware was on the first platter and to read that area we needed that head number one and first platter to be ok, which it was. After removing the second platter and installing a donor platter we were pleasantly surprised that the hard drive was able to calibrate without any modification to the firmware. We did have to tell our utility to read only with head numbers one and two; this worked without a problem. In the end we only had about 24 bad sectors.

After the initial operation we proceeded to re-install the second (damaged) platter; which had been replaced with the donor platter. This time we limited the utility to use head number 3 and read only the third surface. We heard some occasional knocking coming from the drive, but it was read with success.
Next came the final step: reading the data from the fourth platter in spite of the damage to it. The key element to successful retrieval in this instance was to minimize the reading done to the drive. We requested our utility to create a map of all folders and files; if one particular file fell within the damaged area we would skip it in order to prevent damage to the heads or to the platters.
At the end of this step we were able to recover more than 98% of the total data stored to this hard drive, leading to recovery of about 34,000 picture, video and document files. The customer was extremely happy; he was convinced that the data would never be recoverable. Thankfully, it did not turn out that way.
Disclosure: this article is for reference only. The name of some tools and also some of the important steps are maintained confidential.
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